NEW BEDFORD — February 21, 2013 — An online petition is seeking to close the beleaguered Northeast Regional Office of the National Marine Fisheries Service in Gloucester.
It points to remarks by Regional Administrator John Bullard, who said recently, "We set the rules and clearly the rules have failed. There's no other conclusion."
He was at a New England Fishery Management Council meeting, referring to the apparent collapse of cod and yellowtail flounder stocks, and the extreme cutbacks in quota in the fishing year starting May 1.
"We believe that just as there are consequences for failures in business, so too should there be consequences for failures in government," the petition states.
Bullard told The Standard-Times that "this is very serious business that we're dealing with, and that petition is not serious. So I don't want to waste any time on it."
The petition asks that savings from closing the building be directed toward Northeast groundfishery disaster relief and new science.
The petition is addressed to Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Maryland, chairman of the Senate appropriations committee.
A spokeswoman for NOAA, Teri Frady of the Northeast Science Office, produced a notation from the committee's 2011 budget deliberations that called for a study of closing the Northeast office. The same proposal was made again last year in the 2013 budget talks.
But the measure wasn't enacted, and the study apparently never happened although NOAA answered many questions for the committee, said Frady.
At a meeting Wednesday in New Bedford with U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and William "Mo" Cowan, NOAA came under fire for adding staff and expanding that office while fishermen are losing their jobs because of quota cutbacks.
Read the full story in the New Bedford Standard Times
Read the online petition here